


Cloaked

by acornsandravens



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, First Kiss, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:45:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acornsandravens/pseuds/acornsandravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Gendry and Arya share a cloak with one another, and one time they share a cloak with someone else. Bonus: seasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cloaked

**Author's Note:**

> All but one of these fits into some sort of loose chronological timeline that sort of ties them together, but read it however you like. This was SUPPOSED to be a quick little drabble, and look what happened. Characters belong to GRRM.

i.

The long summer was finally dying.

Arya was from the north, a land where the summer snows came often and the winter snows crept in like The Stranger to suck the life from whatever they touched. She had been born and bred in the mists and fogs and frosts where her family’s roots grew into the ice, not the earth. She thought it would be ironic to die of the croup well south of the Neck, but if the rain didn’t stop soon she was likely to shiver herself straight into the ground and save them the effort of digging her grave.

How she wished for her furs now: darling ermine trimmed cloaks of wool that had once been Sansa’s, rabbit skin mittens and mufflers, soft fox fur caps to warm her ears. Locked away safe in her old chamber at Winterfell where they were absolutely no use to anyone except the moths and the mice. Likely she had outgrown them anyway, she thought, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth and wishing she had longer arms, or more of them like the Kraken of the Ironborn.

She had neither, she had nothing. Nothing but Needle and the fine castle clothes she had escaped with, the ones that hadn’t been stolen and stripped off of her in Flea Bottom. Even her rags had turned to rags weeks ago. The fine light weaves had served well in the hot walls of the Red Keep. They didn’t serve half as well torn, threadbare, and soaking wet.

Arry would not beg, would not show a flicker of weakness. Arry had learned that silence was wise, when travelling among the castoffs of Kings Landing and the desperate criminals headed to the Wall. Besides, it wasn’t so bad during the day, as long as she pressed close to the back of her donkey or walked to keep herself warm.

It was the hours when they stopped that were the worst, while they gathered what pitiful damp wood they could find and struggled to make it light. If they did, and if she was lucky, there would be a warm meal, or at least some tea. That would stave away some of the chill until it was time to sleep on the wet ground under her wet blanket and it started over again.

She lingered overlong with her donkey that night as they made camp, huddling near the beast’s steaming hide while it eyed her warily, mouthing its supper lazily.

“Here,” said the blacksmith boy. Gendry. A southron name.

“You’re like to put the mounts off their feed if you don’t stop staring at them. Then where would any of us be?” he asked, pulling the cloak off of his shoulders and wrapping it around her own. It was big enough to go around her twice and long even for him, overgrown as he was. She had no idea where it had come from- she didn’t recognize it as his, or any of the other men’s. She didn’t want to know. There were plenty of corpses in these woods.

“Thank you!” She called after him, huddling into the warmth that the leather still held.

Now there would be one less.

ii.

It was winter, but the shivering sea had stopped shivering quite so fiercely and the lull in the season was disconcerting.

Arya tugged her hood up and carefully made sure her hair was concealed underneath before she stepped out of the doorway. She was sure no one was behind her now, but she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling of being trailed since she arrived in White Harbor. She wished she still had the ability to change her face, but she had left that skill behind when she chose to leave Braavos.

Still, she hadn’t forgotten everything she learned, and her dark clothing blended into the shadow and her light footsteps were silent on the cobblestone street. She could virtually disappear if she chose, and like a spider she kept to the dark places and hid her fangs.

The disturbance in the air behind her stirred the hairs on the back of her neck and she prickled. A breeze. Just a breeze. No one here knew her, no one had any reason to even remember the face of little Arya Stark.

And yet her fingers tightened on the dagger in her belt and she sank deeper into the protection of her disguise, and she quickened her steps, her feet moving surefootedly across the cracks and the bumps in the stone.

She was almost running when the hand wrapped itself in her trailing cloak and pulled _back,_ hard. She stumbled and threw her weight forward to tear away, but the wool only lost its shape and the ties bit into her neck, choking, but if she pressed harder- harder- it had to give.

Twisting and tangling in the expanse of fabric, she turned with her dagger drawn and faced her attacker, who was shielded in the same shadow that she had thought was there to protect _her_.

A rough hand caught her wrist and crushed down on the joint, and her fingers opened unbidden and her dagger fell uselessly to the ground. With her free hand she took a wild, powerful swipe at what must have been a face, but she only succeeded in glancing a stubbled jaw and giving his teeth a good rattle. She hoped he bit his tongue off.

After a second of swearing and a tussle her other hand was caught, too, and even though she kicked and met her target each time, she was unable to break loose.

She was pressed back into the pool of darkness against the stone of the neglected city wall. She had chosen this route specifically because of its lack of guard, and now there was no one she could hope to rescue her. That was okay. She had never needed rescued, not really.

He held her against the wall with the bulk of his body and forced both her hands above her head. It only took one of his to shackle her as firmly as any manacle. His own dagger brushed the pulsepoint in her neck, and the cold steel sent a chill through her.

She still squirmed when he reached up and shoved back her hood, and then there was nothing to be done but stare at him defiantly in the moonlight, exposed at last.

The man chuckled and sheathed his knife.

“That was easier than I thought,”

Blue. His eyes were blue, and she could see the stars in them, the sickle of the moonmaiden.

She could scarcely breathe, and it had nothing and _everything_ to do with his body pinning her in place.

“Gendry,” it caught in her throat, not quite a sob.

“Arya.” he acknowledged.

Hearing her true name after all those years was as sweet as anything. Hearing him say it, though, was even sweeter.

She didn’t believe in promises. The way he kissed her, though, was a promise, as true as any oath and _it was a vow_ , she thought stupidly. There was intent in that kiss, and she realized in a rush that he meant to _have_ her. Maybe not tonight, up against the wall, but it was there in the way he slid his tongue past her teeth to taste her and coax her into melting into him, in the way his fingertips sank into the flesh of her hips to pull her closer. The mere thought sent a jolt to her toes and other more interesting places besides.

When he reached for the laces of her jerkin she undid them for him, and her cloak pooled forgotten at their feet.

iii.

He couldn’t say where they were, exactly. Arya still navigated by the moss on the trees, and seemed confident in their direction. He imagined they must have gone past the Twins by now, though they took care to skirt any holdfasts or castles in their path.

Arya said it would still be weeks before they reached Winterfell if the weather held. Weeks before they knew what still remained of the castle, or who had returned there. Rumor claimed the heirs of Winterfell had finally returned and lived in the Wolfswood as skinchangers, like the King in the North. If anyone wished to challenge their hold it would have to wait, the winter had been hard and it still hadn’t let loose of the land north of the neck. The last of the heirs _was_ coming, though, and when she reached home Winterfell would rise again. He saw it in the clench of her jaw and in the fire in her eyes. She would haul the stone herself, Gendry knew. And he could swing a hammer.

Still the unknown gnawed at both of them like the bite in the wind. More endless weeks of plodding travel seemed an eternity, but weeks were only days and days would never be enough time with Arya. Who could say what was waiting the ruins for them? Anyone might have claimed the seat as their own. They might be set upon by beasts or brigands before they even reached the true north.

It didn’t need to be anything so spectacular to tear them apart. He feared sometimes that once she returned home she’d forget him, that her family would take his place in her life. They could marry her off, send her away to safekeeping, or worse- she could thank him for his service, press a gold dragon into his palm and that would be the end of it. No, weeks would never be long enough. He longed for years to share with her.

They came upon a sheltered spot where the wind couldn’t reach into the glen, and there the sun had worked its warmth. The stream was clear of ice and ran clear and blue from the melt. They stopped to let the horses drink, and Arya tossed back her head to let the light touch her face.

 The snow had melted off except in the most shadowy reaches, and white flowers had replaced it, bent green stalks weighted with blooms like icicles.

“Oh look, Gendry,” Arya exclaimed, dropping to her knees on the wet ground. “Snowdrops! I remember these. They’re a winter flower, but they would bloom sometimes in the summer, after a snow. We used to pick them for mother, and she said she liked them better than anything that grew in the glass gardens.”

It was funny to see Arya excited over a flower. She glowed with the weak sunlight and her memories of home, her excitement somehow overpowering the fear and apprehension. It made him smile and ache to think about what they might find- what he might find- when she looked like that.

But at that moment he didn’t want to think about the ghosts. He wanted to fill himself with the way she looked and tuck it away in his memories, to call upon when he was old and alone.

She picked only one little white blossom and held it up for him to sniff. To his nose it smelled like the ground, like a fresh turned grave, and it was a cold scent. Like frost. A northern bouquet.

Arya tucked herself against his chest for a moment, twirling the flower absently between her fingers. Then she reached up to him for a kiss like she did when she had been thinking too much and sought the reassurance of a human touch.

Her fingers brushed his jaw and the scruff of his beard when he deepened the kiss. He was more desperate for reassurance than Arya Stark ever had been for a certainty. Today he couldn’t force himself to move away. He drew a lazy path down her neck with his mouth and her fingers tightened in the cloth of his shirt. At her collarbone he tasted her pulse, the skin salt-tanged. Arya let her head fall back so he could kiss whatever he liked. He’d known these pleasures before: her kisses and her sighs, how she tasted on his tongue.

“Gendry,” it was an exasperated reprimand. He’d kissed her to distraction a hundred times, and she always hated when he stopped short. She said one day she wasn’t going to let him kiss her anymore if he kept stopping, but she hadn’t followed through on the promise yet.

He’d been waiting on a featherbed, a fine warm fire and a thick blanket to chase her underneath. He didn’t have any of that. He had the sun peeking in and out of the clouds, and a bed of snowdrops and dried leaves. The only blankets were their travelling cloaks, worn with the fur on the inside in the northern way.

Hers kept her off the cold ground, and his settled overtop of them to keep in the heat of two bodies.

He unfastened the ties of her shirt- his shirt, one he had given her or she had taken, he wasn’t sure. When he slid his hands inside to cup her breasts she rolled underneath him, her own hands unfastening her breeches and shoving them down, eager and impatient as always. She kneed him in the gut while trying to kick off her boots and murmured a breathless apology against his lips, but he scarcely noticed her knees when her thighs had parted for him. Gendry sat up from her then, and she squealed.

“That’s cold,” she shivered. Her nipples were delicate and as pink as the rest of her, and they stiffened when the air hit them.

“Let me look at you,” his voice sounded strained even to his own ears, but she met his gaze for an instant and then blushed.

“Look fast.” She demanded in a throaty voice, her eyes gone dark.

When his fingers parted her and found her wet and ready her protests had died, and he didn’t think she noticed the gooseflesh or the shivering or anything after that, the way her lips fell open and she scrunched her eyes closed. Her grasp on his wrist was like iron, and she couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted him to move or be still. She’d never been touched, he knew, she had said. It was all a heady rush and unknown, a mystery to be discovered. Funny to think they’d learned to kill before they learned to love.

He’d done no better with his belt than Arya had with hers, but she seemed much better suited to divesting him of his breeches. There were no knees this time, and she tugged smallclothes and all down to his thighs. His cock was out in the open for a moment, and then she pulled him back on top of her with a smile and the cloak was hiding them again.

It was snowing in the sunshine, but he only knew slick heat and Arya and her kisses and the way she had wrapped her bare legs around his hips. After a moment of pure selfish wonder he remembered to press his fingers down in between them where their bodies met and she gasped, the sound shattering out over the stillness and the staccato rhythm of him and her together. Her fingers dug into the cheek of his ass and she arched up and he drove his cock into her deeper, once, twice, a handful of dizzying strokes while she tensed around him, and they strained together for a moment. And then she cried out, and his hands fisted in the furs beneath her and he spilled himself inside of her, his face buried in the warm crook of her neck.

They stayed like that for a moment, tangled under his cloak with the snow falling down on them and the early flowers. Then the cold crept in, and reluctantly they dressed. Neither of them could bring themselves to mount the horses and leave, so they stood for a moment staring at one another in the silence, wondering what it all meant.

iv.

For all he knew, it might have already been summer in King’s Landing.

Here in the North the snows were still blowing. It didn’t seem they were ever going to stop though the maesters said it was spring now. Arya and Bran insisted they still had stored food enough to last if they were careful.

On clear days like today the two of them would pile on their furs and venture out, hoping to scare up a stag that the wolves and the winter hadn’t taken yet. They would have settled for a rabbit or some birds or anything edible, though really he was glad to be outside at all even if he’d lost the feeling in his limbs an hour ago.

Arya idly thumbed her bowstring as she listened for the crunching footsteps of their supper. Her breath had frozen in beads of crystal on the fur that trimmed her hood, and the odd gusts of bitter wind whipped up snow and deposited it in the folds of her clothing. Cursing, she shoved her hand back into the warmth of her glove.

“We’re the only animals stupid enough to come out in this wind. I bet there’s a whole pack of rabbits buried down in the snow beneath us in their tunnels, fat and laughing.”

He pulled his cloak around him tighter before the wind snuck its fingers underneath and yanked it back.

“You’ve got to stop making bets with Meera. You always get mad when she beats you.” He told her, trying to repress a shiver. They’d have to go back soon and warm themselves or wind up frozen solid.

He was surprised she had enough feeling left in her face to give him a look like that. “I don’t get mad. And I let her win, anyway.”

“And how’s that?”

“I bring you. You’re a distraction.” Arya reasoned.

“How am I distracting?” if anything she was the distracting one, a restless ball of energy even when she was standing still, all pink and rosy and glittered in ice.

“Look at you,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re shivering from your boots to your brows. You don’t even have your cloak tied shut. No wonder you’re cold, southron. If I didn’t worry after you the whole time I’d be able to hunt properly.”

“It’s hard to tie them with the gloves.” He offered lamely. She rolled her eyes and sighed, undoing the laces and burrowing under the heavy fur and leather with him.

“Don’t worry.” Her arms reached up and wrapped around his neck, nearly upsetting his hood in the process. “I’ll keep you warm.”

Even through his layers he could feel the press of her curves as she fit their bodies together.

She studied him for a moment, her eyes searching his.

He kept telling her they had to stop this.

They never did. There were too many cold and lonely nights, too many dark corners and too many nameless fears.

He had thought his lips were numb until she kissed him. He had thought the rest of him was numb, too, but she brought the feeling back in a hurry. He protested when she pulled his gloves off, but when she stuck his hands under her parka and onto warm bare skin he found he didn’t miss them a bit.

When she shivered it wasn’t from the cold.

“Let’s go back, Gendry.” she murmured, hooking her fingers underneath his belt.

Sometimes when the blizzards stacked snow to the rooftops he wondered what he was doing in the North.

The North Remembers, they liked to say.

The South was learning.

v.

It was early summer, and the weirwoods were blooming.

He’d seen Arya scared a hundred times, but seeing her nervous was new.

“Second thoughts?”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “If you aren’t careful.”

“If you keep doing that thing with your eyebrows when you’re angry you’re going to get wrinkles, you know.”

“Good. I hope I get a hundred wrinkles. They’ll all be your fault, and you’ll have to look at them until your sight goes.” she snapped.

How he hoped they lived long enough to get wrinkly and hunched over.

He finished lighting the lamps and torches and the wood was plunged into flickering firelight, the flame making the faces on the weirwoods look like they were smiling at him with jagged wooden lips.

Suddenly nervous Arya was back, solemn as a silent sister as they walked up the path to the heart tree. He smiled at her, but the best she managed to return was a tremulous quirk of her lips.

The maiden’s cloak she had borrowed (without asking) from Sansa was heavier than it looked, and she stood a little straighter when he took it off and put it aside. His own cloak was only wool, and he had no fine sigils or colors to drape over her like she deserved but she took it gladly and proudly.

 

It smelled of Gendry, of iron, smoke, ash, him.

She’d felt like she had birds in her belly all day but not for one moment had she hesitated, never had she doubted that this is where she was meant to be standing, in the godswood with this man. She spoke the words true and even, without faltering. With only the old gods and Gendry there to hear them she could only hope that they would prove satisfactory when they returned to Winterfell. She was certain Sansa would have noticed her missing cloak by now. She imagined her sister would be more upset about her precious cloak than her sister eloping with the blacksmith.

Gendry furrowed his brow in thought, and then counted off on his fingers for a moment.

“Did we say everything?”

Arya frowned. “Are you mine?”

“Yes.” he said it so solemnly she would have laughed at him if she hadn’t known exactly how he felt. They hadn’t meant to be in love. It was an inconvenient thing.

“Then I’m yours.”

“Before the old gods,” he recited proudly, “and the new, if they’re watching.”

She kissed him. Mayhaps he was supposed to kiss her first, since she was a shy maiden according to tradition. That hadn’t gone so well, either.

“By the old gods and the new.” she echoed.

vi.

Gendry formed the bow as carefully as his large fingers would allow, and pulled it snug. Hopefully that would last her a moment, at least. The cloak flapped behind her like a dragon’s wings as she ran out the carved wooden doors ahead of them, shouting about the snow.

“Gods, she makes me tired just watching her.” said Arya wearily. They’d had this conversation before.

“She’s exactly like you.” he reminded his wife for the hundredth time.

“Just be glad she hasn’t learned how to make snowballs yet.” she retorted, smiling at him mischievously.

He was certain Arya would be teaching her before the end of this winter, but he kissed his wicked wife anyway and admired the flush it brought to her face.

A round head poked out of her cloak and stared up at him with wide blue eyes, blinking at the sudden brightness of daylight after the warmth and dark of sleeping comfortably against his mother’s chest. Arya idly smoothed the wisps of his dark hair back into place and he smiled at her, a dimple showing in his chubby cheek. His new teeth were rather cute now that they had stopped making him fuss and sending the whole castle into a fervor in the process.

“Look at the snow, mother!”

“We see it, sweetling. Don’t run on the cobblestones, they get slippery.” She winced as their daughter disappeared around the corner, likely headed to the stables to bother her pony. “I cracked my head there when I was about seven. It bled like a cut pig.”

Arya had an injury story about every corner of Winterfell, if not one of hers than Robb, Jon, Theon, Bran, or Rickon. Sansa must have been a very sedate child, and Catelyn Stark a very resilient woman.

He liked hearing her stories of home, even when she was fretting about something that wasn’t the way it used to be before the sacking. If it weren’t for the color of the new wood and the fact that he had been there for the rebuilding Gendry wouldn’t have ever known that Winterfell wasn’t as it had stood for hundreds of years. Either way, this would be the Winterfell that his children knew and loved and they’d never long for the old things the way Arya did sometimes.

He still couldn’t believe he had sired the next generation of little Stark lords and ladies. When they came back from the godswood married Sansa had cried and made the mistake of saying it didn’t count if there wasn’t a witness. Arya had said that it counted in her eyes, and if Sansa and Bran didn’t like it they’d find her in the forge with her husband instead of the castle, and she’d leave the choice up to them. He’d known Arya wouldn’t budge on the matter.

Still, he hadn’t expected respect, admiration, titles for his children. But her brothers had treated him well, Sansa gave him a grudging tolerance, and the smallfolk that had remained faithful to the Starks were too loyal to question why she had brought back a baseborn blacksmith husband, at least where anyone could hear it. And then had come the babes, and they treated him like a prince for his part in making them, though he maintained that Arya had done the real work.

His son fussed and reached out both fat little arms to his father, and Gendry took him, blankets and all. Arya sighed in relief and worked the ache out of her back.

“He’s getting heavy.” Gendry told her, weighing the bundle in his arms. Their little lad was strong.

“I don’t know if I’ll be glad when he’s walking or if I should be scared. We’ll be equally matched when there are two of them running all over.”

“And outnumbered with three.” He mused.

Arya cut him off with a look. “I don’t even want to hear that talk, Gendry. You can stay out of my bed if that’s what you’re planning.”

“I’ve never been able to stay out of your bed.” he reminded her, and kissed away her frown. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! I must REALLY want them to get married because I always write their wedding.


End file.
